


Still Far Away From Where I Belong

by Asukachan07



Series: The Flash—Hiatus Fics [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Character Study, Emotional Baggage, F/M, HIATUS fix, Introspection, Iris West Loves Barry Allen, Light Angst, Speculation, Speed force shenanigans, West-Allen - Freeform, lightning rod, retrospection, season 7 speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24706849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asukachan07/pseuds/Asukachan07
Summary: Picks up right after the cliffhanger.Iris finds herself in the Central City Hospital and finds Singh.But someone else is waiting for her there.
Relationships: Barry Allen & Iris West, Barry Allen/Iris West
Series: The Flash—Hiatus Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793653
Comments: 16
Kudos: 45





	Still Far Away From Where I Belong

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THE TAGS THEN BELOW!
> 
> This part 1 is centered on IRIS ONLY.
> 
> Apologies to anyone who clicked thinking that there is a West-Allen reunion (that will be the focus of part 2). The title says it all, in a way. The West-Allen relationship is heavily discussed here, however, so I strongly believe that it deserves the Barry/Iris tag. I didn't put Barry in the characters tag, though, to signal that he's not an active character, but he's a main topic of discussion.
> 
> I'm not even sure what this is my friends, canon verse is so out of my comfort zone! Hopefully you'll find something to like if you decide to read on. Thanks ❤️⚡💜
> 
> Title from the solo song "Coming Home" by Skylar Grey.

It only took a second for Iris to realize what was happening.

_The second lasted forever._

She screamed as prisms of colors shone so bright that they eclipsed all of her senses, not just her sight. It hurt, it hurt so much, but somewhere in the most remote corner of her mind she remembered that she'd been through more pain than this. The pain that kept on giving, the wound that never scarred. She'd thought that it was over last year, that after experiencing the worst kind of loss she could go through, surely it was over but the scab started bleeding again and again and again and again and again and again—

_Focus!_

Silence. Emptiness.

Then solid ground caught her feet and sterilized oxygen displaced the toxic thoughts corroding her headspace.

_What if I never see Barry again? What if I'm not even human anymore? Who says that I didn't die just now?_

The beeping and whirring sounds as well as the cold ventilation suggested that her body was still functional and warm, from blood pumped by a heart that would never stop beating for her love, just like her brain would never stop dreaming of having her happy ending.

**_"You know the saying, West: your brain can be fooled and your heart is an idiot_. _But your gut doesn't know how to lie. I'm still not happy that Eric's making me babysit you, but I know a strong gut when I see one. Yours is solid, kid. Trust it."_**

"My gut got me in this mess," the journalist recalled as she looked around, and part of her wanted to gasp in shock but the other part couldn't be phased by anything, not after all she'd seen and heard and _felt._

_BETRAYAL_ flashed in her mind as fragments of her life mingled with pieces of the puzzle that was this world she'd been stuck in for...how long, now? So many days, weeks?

**" _All those days...Weeks. It wasn't her. It was me. Enjoying meals together. Talking about our day..."_**

"Focus," Iris exhaled as she took a cautious step on the tiles of the waiting room of the Central City Hospital.

She had a mission: find David, bring him back to Eva's lab where Kamilla was probably freaking out of her mind, then the three of them would figure out a way to get out of this place and go home.

She shouldn't think about anything that wasn't related to it.

Just like with Kamilla, Iris found Singh frowning at a screen, as if staring at it would help him decipher the code that had created this over the top sci-fi scenario they'd fallen victims to.

"Iris?" The cop asked cautiously as he stepped around a table to put an obstacle between them.

"When I was sixteen you promised to help me with my application for the police academy because my dad wouldn't," she recounted to prove her identity.

It felt like a lifetime ago. At first Iris had thought that her dad didn't believe that she was serious about becoming a cop, that she only said that to support Barry who'd decided long ago that he would become a forensic scientist in order to find the evidence of his dad's innocence.

Granted, that had been the original reason why Iris had wished to be a police detective, but she also admired her dad, whose dad had been a cop too. Grandma Esther had worked as a filing clerk at CCPD! So it only made sense for Iris to perpetuate the tradition.

"Two years later, when I cried in your office at the station because my dad still wouldn't let me apply," Iris recalled with surprising bitterness, but the rest of the memory countered it and she smiled dreamily. "You gave me. The. Most. Delicious, perfectly gooey brownie to make me feel better. I can't believe that I stopped pestering you for the recipe!" She commented in self-disappointment, looking up the ceiling and opening her hands at her side.

"You'd have to ask Rob when we get home!" David replied with a wide smile before walking towards her and gathering her in a bear hug that she gladly returned.

She'd known the now police chief for so long, so he was a sort of a father figure to her. For a blissful second, she felt safe. 

She was no damsel in distress, but there was something about knowing that you were in the presence of an authority figure who you knew was and did good; someone who shared your values of doing your best to help people, and whose honesty and transparency was guaranteed, even if that meant he had to tell you—

_**"I can't give you an exclusive right now, Iris, sorry. But off the record? It seems that the Flash is to be thanked for the situation not escalating further. I'm sure that Joe can tell you more about that...later, after the press conference. Who's that scarlet speedster, anyways? You know his identity, don't you? You named him!"** _

_**"I wish! Maybe he's someone who wanted to be a cop but couldn't because his dad was overprotective just like mine, but now he can do all the saving he wants in a...flash?"** _

_**"Very funny, kid."** _

**_"No, really, I have no idea who he is."_ **

**......................**

_**"You lied to me, Barry...for months!"** _

_Focus,_ Iris belatedly commanded her mind, after the memories from six years ago had already breached in uninvited then collapsed like picture frames accidentally pushed down.

The resentment clawing at her throat from revisiting that last scene left her slightly breathless as she leaned away from David's hug.

"This?" The cop said after he stepped away from her, throwing his hands sideways to encompass the the medical office, or maybe the mirror world in general.

"This is the reason why I pretended not to know that Barry's The Flash after I figured it out," he elaborated after Iris raises her eyebrows in curiosity. "I knew that the moment I got involved in this superhero business, my life would stop making sense! Normal, regular humans' common sense!"

Iris couldn't help it: she giggled.

"Sorry, sorry," she apologized even before Singh finished squinting his eyes at her. "I know that this situation isn't funny, it's crazy, but—"

"It can't be all that bad if you can still laugh like this, kid," David finished the sentence, and that wasn't exactly why she'd laughed.

Because she didn't know exactly why she'd laughed, but now her chest felt lighter and she was more confident than ever that they would get back home soon.

So of course, as she and Singh walked towards the main entrance, Iris heard a voice calling out to her from one of the patients' room.

"Iris!"

_Ignore it,_ she thought, because David clearly wasn't hearing it, so it was all in her head, and what was the point of stopping now, her head went wherever she went, so the crazy wouldn't stop even if—

"Iris West!"

"Hey, I need to check out something," she announced flatly to the CCPD's Chief, expecting a little resistance.

"You sounding bored like that is a good sign, right?" the cop asked, his voice full of worry. "It means that you've done this before and know that you will come right back, right?"

"Something like that!" Iris answered with more confidence than she felt. "Yeah, I'll be right back, not even five minutes. Don't go anywhere!"

"There's absolutely no chance of that happening," David declared with a scoff as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall.

Iris nodded before opening the door to the patient's room, and really she could've done without the blinding white light that welcomed her before she stepped inside. She already knew that the person calling her belonged with the dead.

Iris might not have grown up with her, but she remembered her voice, and she remembered that she'd taken her last breath in that exact room, actually.

"Hello, Iris," Francine greeted her with a bright smile, and Iris was relieved that she looked much better than the last time Iris had seen her.

Much, much better. She was seated at the edge of the bed, dressed in black ankle boots, dark blue jeans, a long-sleeved green blouse that beautifully complemented her skin, and even her cropped hair was styled in finger curls. She had both her engagement ring and wedding band on her left finger and golden stud earrings.

She looked like she'd come straight out of Iris' fantasy when she was a teenager. That was the mom Iris had dreamed of being raised by.

Was this another symptom of the neural dissonance that Iris was experiencing? At least this made some sense. It was psych 101.

"I subconsciously feel abandoned by Barry," she reasoned out loud. "But I logically know that he's looking for a way to get me out of here, so I'm seeing the person who did abandon me instead."

"That is one way of interpreting this encounter, Iris West," Francine acknowledged with a curious squint of her eyes. 

Something shifted. Maybe Iris was just seeing things because she was stressed and sleep deprived, but something changed right after the hallucination of her dead mom first smiled at her. And Iris felt like she was noticing the changes belatedly, seconds later.

_At least it didn't take you entire weeks to know beyond reasonable doubt that something was off—_

"It's Iris West-Allen now, mom," Iris corrected her as calmly as she could, ignoring her own thoughts.

"Now?" Francine asked curiously, tilting her head ever so slightly.

She looked so...youthful. Innocent? Candid, maybe. 

"Yeah, since I married Barry," Iris played along when she looked to her left and pulled the chair that hadn't been there when she'd first entered the room.

There was no time to question this. She'd told David that she'd only take five minutes.

"It was almost two years after you passed away, so I guess it makes sense that my imagined version of you wouldn't know that," Iris reasoned as she dropped on the chair. "So yeah, mom, I'm married now. It's Iris West-Allen. I hyphenated, rather than just take Barry's last name. I guess we're different in that too."

"And how do you feel about your partnership with Barry of late, Iris?" Francine asked as she leaned forward and tried to take her hands.

"Please don't," Iris forbade her as she leaned away, lifting her hands up. "I'd rather only touch the living. I know that I should know better than being superstitious at this point, but..."

"You believe that I'm dead," Francine said, as if it wasn't a fact.

"You are dead," she insisted firmly, then sighed in defeat. "Whatever. That's not why you called me, is it? This is about Barry."

"Yes, it's about Barry Allen, Iris West," her mom's ghost agreed, insisting on using her maiden name. "You must return to his side, you're his—"

"Wife?" The journalist asked instead of stating. "Lover? Best friend...soulmate? That's highly debatable at this point."

Another truth she needed to speak out loud, because she'd die before going back to some couple therapist. She didn't need any third party to tell her how to fix her marriage. She could fix it herself, they could fix it together.

_If only Barry would meet me halfway._

"He never does," Iris voiced something that didn't even sound true, not to the part of her that wasn't going insane from being in this weird place for too long.

"Who? Barry?" Francine guessed, and Iris nodded, because yeah, this was better than couple therapy.

Talking about her failing marriage with her dead mother whose own marriage had failed. No judgment, only understanding and genuine sympathy.

"He always leaves me behind, and I've just been lucky that he always comes back," Iris argued. "When his time traveling adventures start getting boring or dangerous, and he wants to go back to something familiar and easy..."

_What? No, girl, you're tripping!_

"No, that's unfair of me to say," she amended as she gave into the urge to scratch the inside of her elbow. "Most of the time Barry travels through time to find a solution to save the world or to save people, me included. It's just...according to him he never actually comes back to the same moment he left, to the same me...and that doesn't even bother him. It never does. For him I'm just all the same."

She scratched her arm a bit harder. It still didn't alleviate the itchiness.

_Stop that,_ she chided herself internally, and accordingly dropped both arms and placed her hands on her lap.

"Oh, sweetheart, no, it's not true," Francine cooed, and this time Iris clearly saw the whole spectrum of visible light bend and twist around her. 

So her anger braked and waited halfway up her throat for her eyes to adjust to the anomaly before reprimanding the older woman properly.

"Don't call me that!" She shouted at the illusion of her dead mother. "You have no right to call me any pet name! Barry leaves, but he comes back, as fast as possible when he can help it. But you left me for good! Do you know how hard it was to grow up without a mother?"

"Barry grew up without a mother, too," Francine had the galls to point out with a an innocent blink of her eyes. 

"Barry had me!" Iris nearly screamed. "Even before tragedy hit his family, I was already there for him! I defended him against bullies, told him to speak up in class because he always had the right answers. And I was there for him when his mom died, and when he decided to become a CSI I supported him and I encouraged him to keep looking for clues about his mother's murder. And what did he do when he got those clues?"

Francine didn't say anything, she just looked at her expectantly.

_Someone who just listens, for a change. I only had to be kidnapped into another dimension and suffer from some neural dissonance to see it!_

"He lied to me, mom!" Iris explained to a projection of her own mind, probably. "I was getting close to figuring out that Dr. Wells—Thawne! I knew in my gut that Eobard Thawne couldn't be trusted, and if Barry hadn't betrayed me by gaslighting me...me, his best friend! The superhero always tells his best friend about getting powers! But he hid his identity as the Flash to me for months! He told dad, and Eddie, and his new friends from S.T.A.R. Labs..."

"Barry told you why he couldn't tell you, even though he truly wanted to," Francine calmly reminded her, her lips stretching in a sympathetic smile.

"Because dad told him not to, in order to protect me?" Iris remembered, her anger heated further by righteousness. "Dad's the biggest liar of us all! He lied to me about you, and he never even believed Barry about Henry being innocent! No one believed Barry back then, no one except me! I was the only one who trusted his account of the event on that terrible night. I'm the one who told him not to lose faith, to listen to his gut. I should've listened to my own gut, even when he told me to stop looking into S.T.A.R. Labs! I was an idiot for trusting him then. I thought that he'd share something as important as him becoming the very same impossible that explained what he saw as a kid, that proved his dad's innocence. I could've helped him free his dad earlier, and we would've learned not to trust other speedsters..."

_Zoom wouldn't have become so powerful, nor killed Henry...Oh, Henry, I'm so sorry! I'm the one who asked you to come back when I didn't know how else to cheer Barry up!_

"...and Thawne wouldn't have been in that jail manipulating our baby girl in the future!" She added, barely stopping herself from sobbing.

She took a deep breath to calm down, almost ashamed at her outburst for a resentment she'd thought had died a long time ago. She'd believed that getting married to the man she loved would wash away all of their baggage. Forgive and forget. She loved him enough for that.

She'd forgiven Barry for his secrets, but it was hard to forget when he kept making these unilateral decisions! When he promised that she was everything to him but his first instinct during a crisis was to leave her behind, all alone.

_He doesn't love me,_ she realized, stricken. _Not the way I love him. He loves the idea of me. That's why he's always been comfortable with all these different versions of me he gets to hang out with in other timeline or parallel universes..._

Including one that hadn't even been alive. 

_**"...sharing your bed."** _

Technically, Iris should feel relieved that Eva's creation had been the one other version of her whom Barry had spent the most time with. She hadn't been human, not even a living being. So him sleeping with her was a very disturbing equivalent of using one of those creepy sex dolls. He hadn't really cheated on her.

But it was the principle of the matter...

"Barry thinks the world of you, Iris," Francine asserted. "No, you mean even more than the world to him. Because you are more than just his lover or best friend. Yes, you two are soulmates, but so much more at the same time. Your bond transcends the standards of mere mortals—"

"I don't need the pep talk, I know," Iris cut off her mother's ghost.

She almost returned to thinking straight, but doubt dragged her back into the darkness of her illogical side.

"It's Barry who doesn't understand, who doesn't feel that way," she complained, then she winced and pasted both hands to her temples when an acute pain stabbed through her skull.

"I was missing for weeks, and he didn't even feel it," Iris kept going after pausing, but verbally backpedaled when her mom stared at her skeptically. "No, I know that at first he suspected that something was amiss with that mirror version of me...but he got used to the oddity so quickly! How could he just accept that I'd changed so drastically?"

"It must be because the whole universe has changed drastically too," Francine reminded her as she looked down at her hands, suddenly forlorn. "It took time for balance to be restored on multiple planes of existence. It took us time to accept that we could be subjects to such drastic changes ourselves. The adjustment was...breaking."

"Heartbreaking, you mean?" Iris corrected the product of her own imagination with a doubtful look.

Who was 'we'? Her conscious, preconscious and subconscious selves? Her, herself and she? 

"It was saddening, certainly," Francine agreed as she looked up and gave Iris a sad smile. "But it was equally encouraging to see that some things are so fundamental, so absolute, that they refuse to bend even when the greatest cosmic forces are brought to knee. These things that unite us, that help us stand strong after division has made us weak for a infinitely short yet unbearably hard moment."

"O-kay," Iris acknowledged, feeling that she was losing the train of her own subconscious' thoughts.

"Things such as the bond between you and Barry Allen, Iris West," Francine declared with a bright smile. "He is the most fascinating speedster we've reached out to, and that is because he has such an exceptional soulmate. You. You are what makes him the paragon of love. You're his lightning rod: you ground him, empower him, shelter him with your love. And believe us, he's only ever wanted to do the same for you."

"Excuse me, what?" Iris exclaimed as she clambered to her feet, and while her mind started working a million miles an hour to make sense of the words she'd just heard, there was another shift.

Glass panels of prismatic light collapsed all around the room but fell into nothingness as her dead mother stood up from the hospital bed.

Iris winced and closed her eyes when a bright light blinded her. She blinked her eyes open again when she heard a zap of electricity resonate behind her. Then another, and another, and the sharp noises mingled into one buzzing sound that went quiet as if they came from outside the hospital room.

Well, what had been the hospital room. All that was left of it was the door.

"You...you're not my mom," the journalist realized, awe making the hairs all over her skin stand in attention as she glanced around at a blue quasi-empty space with a distant lightning storm as background. "You're the Speed Force!"

Years ago, Barry had told her that the source of his powers often manifested itself under the form of his dead mother. 

But...

"The Speed Force is dead!" She recalled. "Barry has been losing his speed because you were destroyed, I don't know how but that's what he said! He couldn't even fight my mirror image!"

"In truth, only a part of us had to transform into another form of energy in order to protect the integrity of the whole," not-Francine explained as she stood still. "We are infinite but not immutable, and we could feel a sudden change in our midst. The part of us that had the most affinity with Barry Allen was tainted by...there's no other word I find more appropriate than 'death'."

The narration was very monotonous, and she—they—didn't offer any visuals or anything.

A bit disappointing, but okay.

"So we had to dissociate ourselves from each other, fragmenting into non-cohesive entities that were too minimal to retain our nature," the Speed Force informed her. "It was inevitable, as those for whom we were a source of power disappeared one after the other."

"Crisis," Iris whispered, shocked by the realization. "You experienced crisis like the rest of us."

"The aftermath was more disorienting than the collapse of the multiverse itself," the Speed Force specified. "How could we limit ourselves to one universe? There were not enough speedsters through whom we could safely exist in our previous state anymore! Worse yet, we'd lost our connection to our strongest champion. We didn't know how to reach back to Barry Allen without the part of us that was connected to him. We feared causing another cataclysmic collapse by inhabiting such a shallow plane of existence if we just poured into it. So we withdrew from it, and have existed in other dimensions."

"Oh," Iris reacted quietly.

"But we are pleased to have several reasons to return, as well as a mean to do so," the Speed Force announced. "We left prematurely. The multiverse isn't gone as we first thought. Like us, trillions of cosmic forces needed time to come back together. They're still in the process of rebuilding, but one thing is sure, we can and must return to your world. He's still around."

"Who?" The reporter asked, intrigued.

"The Reverse Flash," they answered. "It's elementary, since neither he and the Flash can exist without the other. He's presently in a quantum limbo, but he will soon find his way to Earth-Prime. His ability to harness our inverse quantity was not affected by the crisis."

No way, Thawne was still out there? And of course he was still as powerful as ever.

"And there's another one," the Speed Force added, because of course there was another villain to beat. "Another speedster, to whom we denied a connection in the past that is your future. You know him: August Heart..."

"Godspeed, of course," Iris confirmed. "He was already a problem when Barry had his speed. When I was back in our world, Barry was only dealing with robotic clones but...if he learns that Barry's lost his speed? You must give it back!"

"Indeed," not-Francine acknowledged. "Barry needs us. We were distraught that we couldn't reach him directly...But then we felt a connection to him from someone who suddenly relocated in this more accessible plane of existence: you, Iris West."

"It's West-Allen," Iris stubbornly corrected the otherworldly entity. "I'm Barry's wife."

"You might be," the Speed Force talked back but without an ounce of sass. "but you are quite different from what we remember about you. Physically, mentally...emotionally. You must reconnect with Barry on all three aspects so that we, in turn, may reconnect with him."

They had just made it sound like it would be the greatest challenge of her life! What unnecessary pressure. That shouldn't be a problem!

"Don't you need to connect with me, first?" Iris questioned. "I didn't let you touch me earlier..."

"Oh," the Speed Force reacted innocently, smiling sheepishly. "No, we were just trying to comfort you. Sorry, we failed. We aren't very proficient in human communication skills. But we're already part of you, Iris, there's no need for a physical, though imaginary contact."

_Huh?_ Iris thought and said.

"Don't you feel it?" They asked her as they tilted Francine's head to the side.

"The neural dissonance, that's you?" Iris asked, appalled.

"Not at all," the Speed Force denied with a shake of Iris' mom's head. "That is the result of your lingering presence in this foreign plane of existence. Your quantum frequency is indeed in dissonance with this world's. You must leave it promptly, along with your friends."

"We don't know how!" Iris admitted. "I don't even know how I got here!"

"You were looking for David Singh," they reminded her, "so we helped you get to him. We couldn't help you before because, as we told you, it's taking some time for us to reconnect with our own nature. Hence the..."

They waved a hand at Iris, who stared down at herself and gasped at her transparent yet reflective form. She was shining multicolored lights all over the place.

"But once we're in direct contact with a speedster, we'll remember exactly what form of powers we're supposed to give," the Speed Force assured. "Apologies for the inconvenience."

"What about Eva?" The journalist questioned. "Did you give her powers too?"

"That would be quite difficult, considering that Eva McCulloch was not connected to us before the collapse of the multiverse," they answered in a roundabout way. "No, she harnessed the power of light refraction when she was hit by a wave of dark matter six years ago. Were she not a brilliant scientist, she would've perished shortly afterwards."

Ah, so that part of the story was true.

"We must warn you: she might look human, but she is fundamentally different from the woman she was when she first relocated here," the Speed Force told her. "She is an integral part of this world now. Finding a way to exist on Earth took her a lot of time and resources, and she's a danger to all because one of those resources is dangerous in himself. We've fought against him once, to protect Barry from his poison. We lost. You were there after our defeat. In fact, you were able to tell right away that Barry was being manipulated by that dangerous being."

"Ramsey Rosso," Iris groaned. 

That black substance her mirror version had thrown into the window between the real world and the mirror world! It had been Rosso's blood, hadn't it?

"For the safety of your kind, you must return Eva here, Iris. We will help you in that endeavor once we establish our connection to Earth-Prime. For now, you are our only link to your world through your bond to Barry Allen. But you won't be for long. If your brain is further affected by neural dissonance, you might lose yourself...you might lose your connection to your soulmate, your husband. And we won't be able to help you anymore."

"You don't need to tell me twice," Iris reassured them as she stared at the door, then looked back to them. "I must go now."

They simply nodded, relief and...pride shining in her mother's eyes.

Iris had walked to the door and was about to open it when she looked back at the infinite source of powers who had impersonated someone she wished to have known better. The journalist knew that it wasn't her real mom, and it's not really like she'd missed her all that much growing up. She hadn't, not after Barry had come live with her and her dad.

And yet...

"Will I see you again?" She asked, giving into her willfulness. "You won't need to interact with me once you get back with Barry, I guess..."

"Quite the contrary," they reassured her, "we would love to meet again, Iris West—sorry, Iris West-Allen. As we said earlier, you are the reason why Barry Allen is such an exceptional speedster. It is an honor to properly meet you, finally."

"There's something I don't understand," Iris admitted. "If you're so sure of my bond with Barry, of the strength of our love—in our own world, that is—why do you insist on using only my maiden name?"

"We're not certain ourselves," not-Francine answered with a light frown. "Maybe..."

"Yes?" The journalist prompted.

"Your Barry has repeatedly claimed that there would've been no Flash without 'Iris West'," they recalled with a quick smile. "That is an accurate, but incomplete statement: there would've been no Flash without Iris West...and us."

"I will make sure to point that out to him as soon as he gets his speed back," Iris promised after letting out a quiet laugh.

"We know that he's aware of it, but please do," the Speed Force encouraged. 

"My more pressing question, though," Iris added before she could lose her nerves. "Why do you always try to pull us apart? I know that to you it's probably a small price to pay for the safety of the whole universe, but—"

"We do not wish to ever see you apart, Iris," the Speed Force denied. "That would be counterproductive. As we just mentioned, Barry needs you to be at his best."

"I don't understand," Iris confessed with a frown. "The way Barry presents it..."

"We are ever intrigued by Barry's paradoxical ability to be the most resilient speedster we know while experiencing profound self-doubt," the entity wearing Francine's face admitted in turn. "Not long ago—from his perspective—we asked him why that is so."

"What did he answer?" the journalist immediately inquired, though the wife in her quickly added. "No, don't tell me, I'll ask him myself."

"We are curious to know the answer, as well, for we doubt that Barry was clear-headed enough to provide a logical one. He mistakenly assumed that it was our wish, or our belief, that he had to sacrifice his future in order to save the multiverse from utter destruction." 

"Because the Monitor told him that he had to die for the universe to stand a chance against complete destruction," Iris remembered with outrage and bitterness. "He had the wrong Flash! It had been Barry Allen from Earth-90 all along!"

"No," the Speed Force objected calmly. "The Monitor was right."

"What? How?" Iris questioned.

"You must go now, Iris...West-Allen," they urged her instead. "We'll have time to speak again once you return to your world."

"Right," Iris acknowledged before opening the door and stepping back into the hallway where Singh was exactly in the same position she'd left him.

"That was more like ten minutes," she announced sheepishly after closing the door behind her.

The police chief blinked at her. Thankfully, it wasn't because she was shining bright like a diamond reflecting all visible wavelengths of light.

"Was that a joke or did you misspeak?" He asked skeptically as he fell in step with her fast strides towards the exit. "It wasn't even ten seconds, Iris. You went in and immediately came out."

What?

Iris almost looked back at the door, but she decided against it.

"Right, I meant ten seconds," she lied as she internally chuckled.

The Speed Force had a sense of humor.

* * *

"Thank God! I was worried sick!" Kamilla exclaimed as she threw herself at Iris, hugging her fiercely, throwing a quick hi to David before unnecessarily patting Iris down.

"Kamilla, I'm fine," the journalist assured her, half-amused and half-guilty by her friend's distress. "Let's go, it's about time we went home," she instructed her as she grabbed Singh's hand again, then placed her other hand on Kamilla's shoulder.

"What do you mean 'let's go'?" The photographer asked whereas the cop simply nodded in agreement. "Did you figure out a way to—" she asked as she turned her head towards one of the screens in the room of the mirror S.T.A.R. Labs.

That was the last action Kamilla ever took in that crazy dimension.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


End file.
